Insight and IBM to bring Europe’s largest Machine Learning and Data Mining event to Dublin

Europe’s largest Machine Learning and Data Mining event is coming to Dublin

As the Web Summit opens its doors in Lisbon, a major new tech event is announced for Dublin

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

08/11/2016

INSIGHT CENTRE FOR DATA ANALYTICS/IBM Research - Ireland: The largest event in the European machine learning and data mining calendar comes to Dublin in 2018, following a successful co-bid by IBM Research- Ireland and the Insight Centre for Data Analytics.

ECML/PKDD 2018 is expected to attract at least 600 science and industry delegates from all over Europe to a flagship Dublin venue, due to be announced next year.

ECML/PKDD is the forum at which data scientists discuss new techniques that enable machines to learn from data and their environment. Major topics at recent conferences include ‘deep learning’, a method central, for example, to IBM Watson or to Google Deepmind AlphaGo.

Other areas explored at the event include ‘reinforcement learning’ that allows robots to update their knowledge as they interact in the world and ‘network analysis’ to extract knowledge from social media interactions and learn people's preferences.

The Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Ireland’s national data research institute comprising 400 data scientists, made the successful bid in partnership with IBM Research - Ireland at this year’s event in Riva Del Garda in Italy. "The event, sponsored by industry giants such as Google, IBM, Deloitte and Siemens, will copper fasten Ireland’s position as a European leader in data research," says Insight’s Dr Neil Hurley, who led the bid alongside IBM’s Dr Michelle Berlingerio.

“This is an important win for Dublin, especially this week as the Web Summit opens its doors in Lisbon,” says Dr Hurley. “It signifies the standing of our data and machine learning research in Europe. Our ability to attract prestige events like the ECML/PKDD conference proves that Ireland is a competitive tech hub in Europe, with the research clout that makes us a natural home for an event of this stature.”

“For the first time in its 15 year history as joint ECML-PKDD conference, this event will come to Ireland” says IBM’s Dr Berlingerio. “This is an important result for both Ireland and the conference itself: Ireland confirms its ability to attract top-level research communities into its economy of talents, while ECML-PKDD has the opportunity of expanding its network to the Irish ecosystem, which has seen an impressive explosion in IT in general, and in both Data Mining and Machine Learning in particular.”

“ECML-PKDD is the largest European forum for Machine Learning and Data Mining, which form an important pillar for IBM Research's strategy in Cognitive Computing, Internet of Things, Natural Language Processing and Healthcare” says Dr. Wendy Belluomini, Lab Director IBM Research – Ireland. “Our lab have had the pleasure of sponsoring and participating in the event, now we have the chance to organize it, and this is exciting.”

IBM Research - Ireland and the Insight Centre worked closely with Fáilte Ireland and Keynote PCO on developing the bid for ECML/PKDD 2018, event that will take place over 5 days in September 2018.

For further information contact:

Louise Holden

087 2423985

louise@fhmediaconsulting.com

www.fhmediaconsulting.com

Notes for the Editor

ECML/PKDD

ECML PKDD is an annual European event and one of the leading academic conferences on machine learning, data mining and knowledge discovery. ECML PKDD is a merger of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) and European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD). ECML and PKDD have been co-located since 2001. At ECML/PKDD, researchers discuss novel methods for extracting knowledge from data using methods such as factorisation machines, Bolzmann machines, Bayesian networks and neural networks. The event has grown rapidly since the merger and this year’s event in Italy was host to over 650 delegates. http://ecmlpkdd2016.org/

The Insight Centre for Data Analytics

The Insight Centre for Data Analytics is Ireland’s national data research institute, established by Science Foundation Ireland in 2013. The Centre brings together 400 data scientists in Ireland to develop our R&D capacity in data analytics across a range of fields including machine learning, natural language processing, sensor technology, connected health, smart agriculture and industry 4.0. The Insight Centre collaborates closely with industry on a range of targeted projects and is Ireland’s largest beneficiary of H2020 funding to date. www.insight-centre.org

About IBM Research

For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents. Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 19 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame. Since 2011, IBM Research - Ireland research scientists and engineers have teamed closely with industry, European Union H2020 and academia partners, including our collaboratory lab with University College Dublin which opened in 2015.We have expertise in data centric computing, optimisation and control, decision science, statistics, machine learning, large-scale modeling, data mining and assimilation, deep semantic reasoning and natural language processing. Together we are building cognitive solutions in healthcare, connected cars, self-aware and adaptive buildings, interactive reasoning, privacy solutions and more.

For more information about IBM Research – Ireland , visit http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/ireland/

Publication Date:

Tuesday, 8 November, 2016

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The Insight Centre for Data Analytics is a joint initiative between researchers at Dublin City University, NUI Galway, University College Cork, University College Dublin and other partner institutions. Insight brings together more than 400+ researchers from these institutions, 100m+ funding, and with over 80+ industry partners, to position Ireland at the heart of global data analytics research.